Jigs and Such

I picked up my first-ever table saw about three months ago, a Porter-Cable 220 Job site saw. (review)
I have been quite happy with it, but it does have a few drawbacks. Probably the biggest, and most often-noted is the funky metal insert next to the blade.
This design does not allow for standard zero-clearance inserts to be used, and no one makes one for this saw.
Having got some cash from Santa, I have my eye on a dado blade set, but only if I can make an insert to work well wit...

I have realized that my router insert I made for my table saw could benefit from having a miter slot closer to it, so I decided just to route one into it.
It seemed logical to reinforce the area underneath the slot, since I was taking away half of the 3/4” of plywood and creating a fault line in a piece that supports a motor spinning carbide bits and thousands of rpms seemed less than optimal.
The only drawback is that I don’t have T-slot doing it this way. I don...

We recently crossed a milestone at our house. We are no long a minivan family after almost 18 years of having one. This makes the wife quite happy and she really likes her new Kia Soul.
However, I lost my way to haul stuff home from Lowe’s.
So, I got to thinking and looking. I just can’t justify a truck…
So I decided to see what I could do with my roof rack on my Kia Rio. I have a rack that I use for my kayaks, so it was just a matter of ripping a 2×6 I had lay...

I had previously made a proof-of-concept semi-zero-clearance-insert for my table saw. (Yes, partial-zero-clearance makes about much sense as partial zero-emission which I have seen on several vehicles lately. Seriously? My car is zero-emission most of the time, because it’s not running…but I digress.)
The other day I decided to get down to doing a “real one.” Same basic method as the previous one. I finally concurred the cut-through by using a smaller blade from my ...